Monday, February 21, 2005

geek food

Cooking is about the only scientific type thing I do. It's fun to experiment with food, using the kitchen as your lab. So tonight's theme is all about edible science.

This restaurant, the Fat Duck, takes food science very seriously, and their website has lots of neat information about the kind of culinary experiments they do. Like studying the relationship of the human brain and taste:

"If you are told that you will be eating crab ice cream, it may appear as a bit of a shock. If, on the other hand, it was described as frozen crab bisque, then it becomes a lot less daunting. An interesting thing however, happens when you eat the ice cream. The brain is pre-disposing the palate to register more sugar than is actually there. This is because ice cream is always associated with dessert."

Cooking For Engineers is a great blog for those, well, engineer types.

An experiment to see if you can make good vodka using cheap crappy vodka and a brita water filter. My kind of science.

To me, it's a scary list of numbers. To smarter people, it's "Common Equivalent Weights and Measures." This would come in useful when watching Nigella or other british cooking shows.

What nerd doesn't love the How Stuff Works website? Check out their thorough section on how food works.

Illustrated food experiments. Fun! I especially like these banana tricks.

A lab schedule for a food sciences class. Interesting.

The CDC's "bad bug list". Scary stuff that lurks in food.

And finally, they've come up with the perfect geek food.

Put on your lab coat and get out your Bunsen burners and beakers! You can hypothesize all you want, as long as the conclusion is tasty.

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